Week 6 Bonuses

Loving And Accepting Yourself

It sounds so easy… “even though I have this PROBLEM, I love and accept myself anyway.” Many people say it without hesitation or thought, but many more are NOT able to say it and have to modify this phrase during tapping.

Learning to love and accept ourselves is especially important when it comes to weight loss, because so many people have overwhelming feels of hate and shame and disgust with respect to their physical bodies. What is it that you’re really telling yourself when you say that you hate your body or a particular body part? What belief is running the show?

This week we’re going to work on identifying the emotions and the stress response they create in your body by looking at the beliefs they came from. Our beliefs can either hinder or support us when it comes to weight loss.

For example, if you have a core belief like “I’m not good enough” or “I’m not worthy”, then it’s unlikely that you’ll feel good enough or worthy of a healthy body. You might even find that you’re attracted to or surrounded by people who give you that kind of negative feedback, thus reinforcing this belief.

Pause for a moment and think about the people and situations in your life. Does your family support you and believe in your worth? How about your spouse or partner or your friends? What about your work environment or your boss? Even the media plays a role. With tapping, you can start to clear the emotions that are holding you back from truly loving and accepting yourself, but you’ll need to go deeper than just saying the words.

For example, I client I recently worked with has been struggling with her weight but also with her transition into being a wellness coach. She has a full-time job in another field, but wants to move away from that. She has invested thousands of dollars in advertising, promoting, and marketing her services, but has not attracted any clients. And she also hasn’t been able to lose weight, despite knowing what she “should” do. During one of our sessions, her underlying belief of not being good enough showed up. It was quite an emotional sessions, with many tears shed, but she realized that she had somehow taken on the belief that she had to “master” and be “perfect” in all areas of her life before she could help others. She really believed with all her heart that she was NOT good enough. Obviously this was the energy she was sending to the Universe and it was also sabotaging her weight loss efforts. With tapping, she is starting to release that old belief system and was even able to laugh at the absurdity of it. She joked that she would have to be a “saint” in order to achieve this level of perfection and she agreed that being an “angel” that could help others was much more realistic and resonated well with her spirit. We’ll continue to work on releasing this energy and tapping on the events in her life that led to this, but she is well on her way to truly loving and accepting herself ENTIRE self and thus releasing the weight.

So many people come to see me with the belief that weight loss = happiness, but in reality it’s the other way around. Happiness (or love and acceptance of self) = weight loss. Think about it. If everyone who lost weight was happy and their lives were amazing, why would the weight ever come back on?

As you continue on your weight loss journey, it’s time to take it to the next level. As painful as it may be, start questioning your deep beliefs about yourself. With tapping, you can decrease the emotional intensity of the fear that might show up just thinking about doing this. Tap on any feelings of unworthiness, not being deserving, not good enough, and so on. These may show up as “rules” from our parents or “stuff” in our current relationships.

Also start questioning your beliefs about weight loss. Does it have to be hard? Must it mean deprivation? Or is that just our “belief”, which can, or course, be changed.

When we truly love and accept ourselves, the excess weight naturally releases. Our need to soothe and comfort with food diminishes. We find joy in movement. We honor and respect ourselves. It’s a beautiful journey and I’m glad we’re on it together.

Karen Donaldson